But when one comes to principles, the difference between the two parties is less clear. The truth is that in the French Revolution there was no place for the Gironde. Two parties, and only two, were possible. One was the party which, representing the great majority of French feeling, had made the Revolution, had swept away the Ancien Régime, had founded the first constitution and had taken its name from its creation, the party which had aimed at establishing political freedom and a new system based on that in France. This party cared for liberty and order but wished for little more, and its mistakes and the fortunes of the time gradually lost it the control of events. The other was the new party, which rose to power on its rival's faults, which cared little for liberty and less for order, but which hoped to use the forces of distress and discontent to grasp the power which its rival had monopolised, to found a new social and industrial system in which it would secure a fairer profit for itself, and to destroy without scruple or compassion all who impeded the realisation of its aims. Between these two parties the Girondists stood. They belonged to neither, but they shared to some extent the views of both. Like the first, they had moderation, a sense of restraint and a love of order. Like the second, they repudiated any compromise with the past and hoped to establish their Utopia. But though they were strong enough to defeat the first, they were not strong enough to resist the second, and they could not fuse with either. They could not join with the Constitutional party, or rally the moderate majority round them, because, though they shared its feeling of propriety, they scorned its tenets and prejudices, its king and its religion. They could not throw themselves into the arms of the Jacobins, because, though they liked some of their democratic schemes, they could not countenance the Jacobin excesses or the Jacobin intrigues, the ruthless levelling of the Jacobin maxims, the Jacobin contempt for property and life.